Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and a leading expert on net neutrality.

Paddy Leerssen was the Open Internet Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society in 2017-2018. AT CIS, he worked on digital media and communications law in general, and net neutrality policy in particular. He is now a PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, where his dissertation focuses on the impacts of algorithmic content recommendations on the governance of media pluralism. Paddy holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar, an LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam, and an LL.B. from Maastricht University.

Marvin Ammori is a leading First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert. He was instrumental to the adoption of network neutrality rules in the US and abroad–having been perhaps the nation’s leading legal advocate advancing network neutrality–and also instrumental to the defeat of the SOPA and PIPA copyright/censorship bills.

Emily Baxter is a research associate for Women's Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, focusing on women's and families' economic security, women's leadership, and work-family balance. She previously worked as the special assistant for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center. In the fall of 2012, Emily was a field organizer for President Obama’s re-election campaign near her hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.

The people of Baltimore are beginning their fifth week under an electronic siege that has prevented residents from obtaining building permits and business licenses – and even buying or selling homes. A year after hackers disrupted the city’s emergency services dispatch system, city workers throughout the city are unable to, among other things, use their government email accounts or conduct routine city business.

The security of our news and media information systems matters as much as the security of personal and commercial information systems. "Information warfare" shows that harms can arise even when there is no unauthorized access, when tools are used as intended, and when there’s no compromise of user privacy settings. In both cases of cybersecurity and news/media security, the threats are asymmetric, the tools readily available, usable for many purposes, and threats are easily disguised as benign.

Today I join several cybersecurity, civil liberties, civil society organizations and researchers in responding to the United Kingdom's GCHQ recent proposal to silently add 'ghost' users from law enforcement or the security services to online chats and calls, including those conducted via encrypted messaging tools like WhatApp, iMessage, or Signal.

From Tuesday on, passengers traveling to the U.S. from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries will not be allowed to have iPads, laptops or any communications device larger than a smartphone in the cabin of the plane.

Over the past two months, millions of people have taken to the streets to challenge our nation’s authoritarian new president.

From the women’s marches that took place across the country and around the world to the mass protests against the Muslim ban and immigration raids, people are resisting the neo-fascist agenda President Trump is unleashing on our nation.

A primary reason why millions have been able to mobilize so quickly is because they have the ability to use the open internet to communicate to the masses and organize a resistance.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

A federal appeals court in D.C. earlier this week threw up a roadblock to the Federal Communications Commission’s plans for the future of the Internet in America. The details of the case were relatively straight-forward: Comcast was caught interfering with traffic by customers using the cumbersome file-sharing application BitTorrent, flouting a 2005 FCC Internet policy stating that Web users are entitled to access the content and applications of their choice.

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In 2017, the FCC voted to abolish net neutrality protections, which ensure that we, not the companies we pay to get online, get to choose what we do online. This event will explore what we lost, why it matters, and what’s happening with efforts to restore those protections in the courts, the states and Washington, D.C.

Join the FCBA's Northern California Chapter for an engaging discussion with key government, academic, and industry speakers to discuss the past, present, and future of net neutrality policy in California.

The days are numbered for federal net neutrality regulations. In response, some states are working on their own versions to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking, slowing or charging more for some web traffic. Oregon, Washington and several other states have made new rules, but a bill working its way through the California legislature would go the furthest. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School, about how a state can regulate a business that crosses state lines.